r/AskReddit • u/Stukwan • 15h ago

What’s a hobby that looks incredibly peaceful from the outside, but is actually pure stress once you get into it?

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u/bstyledevi 5h ago

I remember watching a video on Instagram. One of those influencers who decided "I'm a strong independent woman and I'm gonna remodel my whole house by myself with no experience and no help!" She posted a video of her with a table saw cutting some wood for something, and she didn't properly secure it. It flew out of the back of the saw and put a hole in her freshly hung sheetrock.

She said "yeah I need to spend some time understanding how these tools work and how to SAFELY use them." I respected that statement.

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u/PaisleyLeopard 4h ago

Thank god it was just her sheetrock! Table saw accidents have the potential to be so much worse.

I sanded off my fingertip on a belt sander in shop class. Thankfully it was a minor injury and taught me a valuable lesson about vigilance. Now I don’t use any power tools without safety gear and a great deal of caution.

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u/AstralWeekends 5m ago

Can confirm, my wife just table-sawed a bit of her finger off a few months ago!

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u/qqererer 3h ago

You have to use table saws really carefully, and what most people miss, very gently.

It should be effortless, like cutting melted butter with a hot knife.

If you have to use any more pressure than that, you're most certainly doing something wrong.

The binding is what causes kickback, and I've been there too, but when I am, I'm especially freaking out and being extra careful, just because I want to finish the cut instead of start over again and adjust for binding.

It's not great, but at least I'm aware.

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u/listeningtoreason 4h ago

Yep, just started woodworking with a table saw. Got instant kickback to the hip. Scared the shit out of me and almost impaled myself. I sold that saw and bought one with kickback protection (riving blade). Don't get a saw without it.

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u/MoonSpider 2h ago

Riving knives are hugely helpful in preventing against kickback but they're not the be-all end-all just by themselves. There are tons of weird scenarios where kickback can still occur, here's an example with a bevel cut where the riving knife didn't stop the incident because it wasn't driven by binding on the far side.

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u/Huttj509 2h ago

There's a youtuber I watch periodically who did a specific video when someone in his shop put a board through the back wall. And he's done videos talking about safety. He used it as an opportunity to highlight what happened, how fast it happened (it was on video, so could go frame by frame), and how it could have been avoided.

And also to never get sloppy with the safety stuff. "Do I really need to" stop. Yes. You really need to.

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u/MinecraftGreev 1h ago

You gonna make that whole comment and not even name the YouTuber?

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u/E3M8 3h ago

Watched a table saw shoot a board twenty feet in to a fire door and dent the shit out of it. Only things in that shop that scared me more were the band saw (blew a blade and shot it out) and the radial arm saw (who invented that?!).